


The Consequences of Ill Use

by ScaryScarecrows



Series: Gaslights [5]
Category: Batman: Gotham by Gaslight (2018)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jonathan's had enough, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-21 19:23:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13747635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScaryScarecrows/pseuds/ScaryScarecrows
Summary: She chokes, stiffening where she stands, and her hand claws at her collar.“Is something wrong?”





	The Consequences of Ill Use

Mary Keeny is neither tall nor stout. She is, really, frail and wizened, gnarled as an old tree stump and three times as prickly.

In her youth, she had been lovely, a proud beauty with cheekbones that could cut glass and striking blue eyes that shouldn’t have been natural. But her looks have faded, wrinkles swallowing her face and eyes milking over.

Age, unfortunately, hasn’t dulled her tongue. Oh, it’s weakened her, made it harder to wield her cane with any sort of strength or precision, but her mind is as sharp as ever-and as hateful.

“Absolutely not.” she’s snarling, clawed hand smoothing the rug covering her lap. “I will not _allow_ it, Jonathan.”

“I don’t believe you have a choice.”

“I believe that I do.” And then she smiles, demure and yet so horribly smug at the same time. “I most certainly believe that I do. If you don’t drop this foolish notion, you may consider yourself disowned.”

So that’s how this will be, then. Very well.

He tips his head and leaves the room, retreats upstairs to his own.

Fifteen years. Fifteen years since his parents passed away, leaving Jonathan Crane in the care-and oh, he uses that term _very_ loosely-of his great-grandmother. He remembers them, a little-Mother liked to laugh, he recalls, and Father smelled of tobacco.

There aren’t any pictures of them in the house. Granny disowned his mother when she married his father-why she took him in had, for a time, been a mystery. But then he’d grown up a little more, allowing her to dismiss the servants in lieu of a new one-him.

She is so very fond of her money.

Which is why she can’t let him leave. She needs him more than ever, now. The arthritis has eaten away at her joints, making it very difficult for her to move, let alone cook and clean. And he supposes, really, that he could leave regardless, make it on his own as best he can.

He looks at the aviary-crumbled in, now, the birds within long gone, and then at the pale scars on his hands. He hides them with gloves when he’s out, of course, but here, in the house, there’s no need.

Besides. Granny likes to see them. She considers it an accomplishment, in her own way. His leaving will be an accomplishment, too.

Something in him begins to burn.

* * *

Supper is soup, just the thing for a cold, wet day like today.

They sit on opposite sides of the long, oak table, a pair of warped mirrors. Jonathan looks like her-everybody comments on it. He’s not sure why. But he inherited her looks, even if, as people also tend to comment, he didn’t inherit her mannerisms.

_Meek thing…_

_Shy…_

_Mary used to command the room, did you know that? Shame the boy’s so…there._

“I intend to ask Kitty to marry me tomorrow.” he says. A slight mistruth-he asked her yesterday. She said yes. Granny raises one eyebrow, temporarily smoothing the wrinkles on her brow.

“And how do you think her parents will take it when you haven’t a penny to your name, hm?”

“That won’t be a problem.” He smiles at her, takes a bite of soup. “I just thought you’d like to know, is all.”

“I do not like to know. This is out of hand.” Her spoon clatters into her bowl and she stands up, fingers gripping her cane, and begins to hobble towards him. In the past, he might have run. “You are not marrying that girl, you are not leaving to become a teacher, you are _staying here-_ ”

She chokes, stiffening where she stands, and her hand claws at her collar.

“Is something wrong?”

She…folds…ankles to knees to hips, and her cane thumps to the floor. For a second she manages to stay upright, a little, fingers grasping at the table cloth, and he’s quick to rescue his glass from toppling to the floor. Wine stains are impossible to get out of anything…

“I’m sure you understand that I don’t want this cold.” Her fingers fall away from the cloth. “I’ll help you up in a minute.”

She’s gurgling and jerking, milky eyes growing more bulbous by the second, and he moves his chair a few inches to keep a better eye on her.

“Do you remember when I was ill as a boy? Just a cough, nothing serious, but you dragged me out of the house to some event or other and everybody wondered why I was out when I was _clearly_ ill. Do you remember that?” A gasp that he interprets as a _yes_. “We went home in the end and you were _furious_. I remember…I don’t know that you’d been so angry with me before. Since, yes, but not before…”

She’s beginning to seize violently against the rug, shoes thudding weakly as her legs spasm, and he takes a sip of his wine.

“I still have the scar, you know. I have all of them. Every. Damned. _One._ ” He leans over at last, hand clutching the table for support. “I have taken your whims for _fifteen years_ , and I have had _enough_. So do me one favor, please, and get a move on. I don’t want to listen to this all night.”

They’re wrong, he thinks. All of them. He got more of Granny’s mannerisms than they’ll ever truly know.

“It’s a pity you insist on keeping rat poison in the spice cupboard. I must have…not realized. My mistake.” He settles back in his chair and dips a piece of bread in the soup. “Such a tragedy.”

Somehow, her eyes are still accusing, filled to the brim with burning hatred. He raises his glass to her and intones, “To new beginnings.”

It takes her, in the end, over an hour to finally _stop_ , and he almost misses it-one minute she’s wheezing, throat constricting over air that won’t come, and the next, she’s silent, crumpled on the floor like a dead rat.

And that, he thinks, is exactly what she is.

“Good night, Granny. Sleep well.”

He tucks his chair in, steps over her, and begins to collect the dishes while whistling _God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen._ It was always her favorite, after all.

THE END


End file.
